Leavetaking
by bookworm1256
Summary: SPOILER ALERT: As Eragon prepares to leave, he is not alone in saying goodbye. Roran's perspective of the last chapter of Inheritance.


**Disclaimer: I really don't own anything here. I promise. Mrs. E can vouch for me. **

**Note: So I wrote this for my English class. Yeah, I've read notes from other authors who have claimed to turn in fanfics as homework assignments and been like 'how? Who would accept fanfiction as a ligit paper? But then my teacher gave us the option of rewriting a chapter from another person's point of view in place of a book report for our RA book, which just happened to be due around the time Inheritance came out…. Anyway, that's why this is written. My cousin has been bugging me to put this up for nine months so she could read it finally, and so here I am posting it. (Yes, Sophie, yes, it has been done! It only took you reaching through the phone line and forcing me to my computer. Thank you my dear :))**

**So, read away! **

The week in Ellesméra felt like a dream to Roran. It rushed past in a whirl of awing beauty and incredible sights that he had never imagined to see himself. The soaring trees, the enchanting gardens, the feasts and merriment that seemed to bridge dusk and dawn with a warm, glowing stream of light, it was all the gold-spun tales from his childhood, or else the incredible accounts that belonged to Eragon and his world of the Riders. Yet here he was, immersed in it.

He thought, sometimes, when the magic and splendor had befuddled him, that he could have been content to stay here with Katrina and Ismira, Eragon and Arya forever. But most of the time the end of this dream hovered like a melancholy shadow over his thoughts, bringing a tightness to his throat when Roran thought of it, making him cling harder to the moments even as they slipped between his fingers.

All too soon time had rushed past them, and that strange, bitterly wonderful week had closed. It still did not seem real to him, this great cliff he now teetered on the very precipice of. That such a permanent goodbye could be had with no death or war to speak of. After all that had already happened, it rang with such injustice inside him that he could not face it. He wished to rage and shout at Eragon, to knock some sense into his cousin's stubborn block of a head.

But Eragon was not a day-dreaming boy any more. He was not the moody, brooding, rash child Roran had so often pulled back from some foolish stunt. And this time, Eragon was the one talking sense. This plan was not a mere whim, but one he had considered very deeply, and no amount of talking or shouting would sway him. Eragon must leave, and Roran must stay, and that was what it had always been coming to.

But that knowledge did not make it any easier to face, and so Roran grasped at one last chance to put off facing it a bit longer.

"I'd like to accompany you for the first part of the journey," he said to Eragon on the evening before his cousin was set to leave. He was surprised with the effort it took to keep his voice calm, as if they were discussing no more than one of Eragon's hunting trips into the Spine. "If you can take one more person. I'd like to see what the far side of Alagasia looks like, and traveling with you is faster than having to ride all the way out there on a horse."

He had managed to laugh as Eragon grinned, but in the eagerness with which his cousin accepted this offer, Roran guessed that he was not the only one wishing to put off the moment of farewell as long as possible.

Later that evening, after Ismira had been tucked into her cradle and Roran stood looking out over the fantastic sight of Ellesméra and not seeing any of it, Katrina appeared beside him, her soft hand slipping into his as if they'd been made to intertwine. They did not speak, for there was nothing to say, but he could feel her sorrow for the parting in the morning.

Katrina had decided to stay in the city with Ismira. Her guise was that their daughter would be too difficult to travel with, little as she was, but Roran knew better. They had traversed half of Alagasia on Dragonback with the baby. Katrina was allowing him a private final goodbye, and he was glad of it.

Their departure at dawn brought the first hard beads of anguish to Roran's chest. Tears streamed down Katrina's face as she and Eragon said their farewells. She had counted on him as a brother, taken him as the family she had lost in the months of the war. Roran knew how she had prayed that their daughter might know him as an uncle, that they might be able to lesson Eragon's lonely path by including him in the solace of a family.

Eragon held Ismira one final time, murmuring parting words and promising to send her all the treasures of the world, but the baby looked up at him with uncomprehending eyes. She would have no memory of him at all, no knowledge of the pride and adoration Eragon fairly burst with when he looked at her.

And then they were climbing on Saphira's back, launching skyward with that exhilaration Roran realized he would never feel again after this journey.

Arya had surprised them by insisting on accompanying them as well, and she and Firnen sped alongside Saphira, a glittering mass of green gemlike scales reflecting the sunlight and mingling in a dazzling blend of light with the blue reflected off of Saphira.

The journey was a blur to Roran, days and nights of flying above the endless forest, feeling the sun on his face, the chill wind roaring about him. At the edge of a vast lake lay another great city like Ellesméra, where they stayed the night, and bobbing on the smooth waters was a long, elegant, white ship waiting for them.

When Eragon saw it, Roran saw something tauten in his face, a glimmer of recognition in his eyes.

"I dreamed of it," he confided in Roran later that evening. "Before I'd ever left Carvahall, I dreamed of that ship and two dragons in the sky above it. It was always meant to be like this. From the very beginning."

A blanket of lead seemed to hang over Eragon, the weight and reluctance of a choice he must make for the greater good. Eragon no more wished to part from all those he loved than they wished to part from him, but it fell to Eragon to do what was necessary for the future of Alagasia and the Riders.

A seed of anger flared again in Roran. Who had thrust it upon Eragon to make such choices, to hold such burdens? The rules of battle and of generals in war Roran could understand and respect, but it seemed so immensely unfair that after all Eragon had done – after all they had all done – it must end like this.

But there was no use in lamenting. Eragon had accepted his fate and his choice. Roran knew that he must, also. He ought to be proud that Eragon had grown into a man who could make such choices, who could think not of himself first, but realizing this change also drove home the feeling that the boy Roran had grown up with was truly gone already.

The days of sailing through down the great river, through the trees were golden and dream-like. With each current that slipped past them, Roran, Eragon, and Arya knew their time together was slipping to its end, for good this time. But none of them spoke of it. They held onto one another's presences, and Roran could feel Eragon's reluctance for it to end.

Eventually they left the towering trees behind for the plains, open and desolate as he had always pictured the edges of the earth. Roran could not believe that he was casting Eragon into such a wilderness by himself.

When they had been small, Roran's father had once rebuked him for allowing Eragon to wonder away and get himself lost in the fields.

"He can't find his way back as you can. You aren't to leave him alone."

He had made Roran vow never to do so.

And at last they reached the final outcropping of civilization; the trading post where Oric and his clan were waiting. Surprise and delight crossed Eragon's face at the sight.

"You didn't think I'd let mine own foster brother leave without a proper goodbye, did you?" Oric shouted as their ship approached.

Grinning, Eragon cupped his hands around his mouth and called back to his old friend, "Never!"

Oric insisted on a feast and celebration that lasted well through the night and the next day, delaying the final moment of parting. Arya, too, stayed through to see Eragon off. From the looks he caught his cousin giving her, Roran gathered that Eragon had expected and feared Arya to leave at any moment.

There was another great unfairness, Roran thought. He had seen Eragon hang off of Arya's every word since he had joined the Varden, heard the hurt in his voice when he spoke of her drawing back, her reluctance, and had felt the desolation that emanated from Eragon in waves at her departure all the months ago when the war had ended.

If there was one thing he had clung to as being good and pure during the most grisly and trying moments of this war, it had been that boundless love he and Katrina shared. It had kept him from falling off into the dark void of despair many a night on the battlefield. That Eragon should never have such a lifeline or comfort, for all the many, many years he would live, not hold in his arms a child of his own, an embodiment of that connection, tightened the sorrow building inside of Roran.

Oric tried to persuade them, when night fell again, to stay longer, and Roran wished with all of his heart that he would. But Eragon shook his head, smiling sadly.

"If I don't go now, I fear I shall never leave," he said.

Roran prepared for the last leg of the journey – one that he and Eragon had been taking together for all of their lives, really. It was all coming to a parting of the ways now.

Oric gave Eragon his blessing and hugged him roughly, pounding him on the back. Then they rode the last of the trails down to the water together. He, Eragon, and Arya spoke softly together of nothing of importance as they moved along the tree-lined path. All were aware of the thread of their time together spinning out in earnest and they held on as tightly as they dared to the fragile moments, the closeness the night wrapped them in.

At last the ship's ghostly white sail emerged from the trees. Roran's chest was tight now. It was not so different from the crushing feeling that had filled him when he'd seen the palace collapse, the grief that had flooded him then when he'd believed Eragon to be gone beyond his help. Swallowing these torrents before they burst from him, Roran dismounted and solemnly watched the rest load the ship and form two lines, preparing to give Eragon a formal send-off.

Eragon picked up the small chest of gold and jewels that Oric had given to him as a token of friendship and walked over to stand before Roran.

"This is where we part then?" Roran asked with difficulty, looking past his cousin to the ship.

"Here," Eragon said, thrusting the chest at him. "You should have this. You can make better use of it then I. Use it to build your castle."

"I'll do that," said Roran, his voice thick.

Back in Carvahall, back where they had come from, he would build the castle he and Eragon had fantasized about as boys. Never mind that Eragon would never see it.

He placed the chest under his left arm and embraced Eragon with his right. They gripped each other tightly for a long moment as a howl of memory rushed Roran: Long winter nights spent sprawled together by the fire, listening to Garrow's stories, days of working side by side in the fields beneath the blazing sun, the boy who had once turned to Roran to chase away his nightmares, who was tenacious enough to pin Roran even being younger and smaller, the only soul brave enough to venture into the Spine for days at a time…. A lifetime of being comrades in arms, brothers in all but name.

Finally they broke apart.

"Be safe, Brother," Roran told him.

"You too, Brother. Take care of Katrina and Ismira."

"I will."

Unable to think of anything else to say, Eragon touched Roran once more on the shoulder and turned to join Arya where she stood waiting for him.

"Eragon," she said, voice oddly strained.

"Arya," he murmured back.

They gazed at each other for a long moment.

"Stay with me," he said finally, pleading almost.

"I cannot," she returned, but each syllable seemed to cost her.

"Stay with me until the first bend," he amended.

She hesitated, then nodded. He held out his arm, and she looped hers through it, and they walked between the flanks and up onto the ship to stand at the prow. The others boarded after them and lifted the gangplank. Without wind or oar, the ship began to move along the river.

Roran stood alone on the beach, watching them go, the pain pulsing through his entire body as if it were a part of him that was being ripped away. And it was. It had to be. It had always had to be, for Eragon had been lost to him long ago, when he had found Saphira's egg in the Spine. Eragon had seen that the earth was round and the heavens hollow. He had long-since left Roran's mortal world behind. As Roran lived and died, Eragon would live on and on, and this lifetime that they had shared would be swept away by the marching of years, ended permanently now that the last ties had been severed.

Unable to stand it any longer, he threw back his head and let out a long, aching cry spiral up into the heavens and the night reverberated with the sound of his loss.

The ship reached the first bend and Firnen swooped low, lifting Arya off the deck and bringing her back to where Roran still stood, watching. Her face was wet, but his was too, and for once, Roran knew exactly what Arya was feeling. They stood together on the beach watching the place where the ship was disappearing and listening to their mourning materialized in Saphira's keening lament for all those things that could never be.

**Note: I do hope you liked it. Please let me know? I love Roran and am very disappointed by the lack of fanfiction out there about him. Thanks for reading! **


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